Pf Award Winners: Where are they now?

Mark Cocking , Commercial & Clinical

23 SEP 2016

The Pf Awards are now in their 17th year, rewarding excellence in pharmaceutical and medical sales. To celebrate the achievements of past winners, Pf is launching an exclusive Pf Award Winners Club. To recognise this, we thought it appropriate to catch up with some of our past winners and see what impact the award has had on their career in the industry.

Just this year, Connor Surrell won the Remote E-Representative of the year award representing the Ashfield Commercial business in the UK, in partnership with Sanofi. He described his award win as “initially daunting, being compared to the top talent in the industry”, but also “a great opportunity to embrace and enjoy the recognition and feedback that a Pf Award win brings”.

Connor proudly explained how the night is “a celebration of the work and commitment the industry has in improving people’s lives” and how the feedback he received from the panel of judges has helped him to adapt and improve the way he works, enabling him “to achieve further success and ultimately deliver the best service I can to the healthcare professionals I work with”.

Also back in March, Ashfield Insight and Performance’s Raheel Mirza won the 2016 award for Learning and Development Initiative, for delivering a quality business simulation workshop for a blue-chip pharmaceutical company.

We asked Raheel how the award has affected him so far, and he explained “the recognition from peers within the industry was great and provided me with the opportunity to talk more about what we do and how we achieved the success of winning the award”. Raheel is passionate about continuing his career within learning and development, using the feedback he received to work with new clients keen to achieve the success demonstrated by the award win.

Ian Robinson, now a Business Development Director for the Ashfield UK Commercial and Clinical businesses, won an award back in 2002, scooping best Regional Sales Team whilst working for Bristol-Myers Squibb.

He recalls, “The opportunity to showcase our ideas and to demonstrate our capability through the competition was fantastic”. After his win, Ian continued to thrive at B-MS, before moving to AstraZeneca and then joining Ashfield in 2015. Ian believes that the award “raised the profile of the team both internally and externally”, and notes that “a number of people went on to be promoted into other roles, and this was fantastic to see as their line manager”.

When asked about his memories of his win, Ian explains, “it was a long time ago but I have really good memories of the experience. The award still sits above my desk as a reminder of the great team I had the privilege to work with”.

We have also seen a number of our past winners go on to careers in top pharma companies such as AbbVie, AstraZeneca and Takeda. For example, Lee Fisher won the Account Manager Award whilst working for Ashfield. Lee, now in an account management position at Takeda UK, looks back on his win as “very beneficial to me and my career. To have that recognition has really set the benchmark moving forward.”

Several of our employees, both past and present will be at the upcoming Pf Award Winners Club launch event in London on Thursday 29th September. We hope all attendees enjoy the night and we congratulate them for their achievements.

If you have any questions about Pf Awards or our past winners please contact jane.neale@ashfieldhealthcare.com.